Death to the Nonbeliever
by levampirekisses
Summary: So your best friend is such a Twihard that she’s convinced she was sucked into the book itself. But what would you do if the same thing happened to YOU? This regular girl wishes she had paid a little more attention “reading” Twilight when she finds herse
1. Chapter 1

So your best friend is such a Twihard that she's convinced she was sucked into the book itself. But what would you do if the same thing happened to **you**? This regular girl wishes she had paid a little more attention "reading" Twilight when she finds herself stuck inside it as her less-than-favorite protagonist, Bella Swan! But it's alright, Bella doesn't get eaten in the first book. ……right?!

**9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**

Disclaimer: In case you can't figure it out on your own, I don't own Twilight. PS: the sky is blue. Yes, I wish I owned Edward Cullen. Or, more specifically, his delicious 2007 Aston Martin Vanquish S………… *wipes drool off keyboard*

**99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**

Preview:_ SOMEONE GET ME OUT OF THIS BOOK, I'M NOT ISABELLA SWAN!_

**99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**

**Death to the Non-Believer**

**Chapter 1**

"Yeah, yeah. I'll see you in class tomorrow. Buh-bye" my phone snapped shut as I tossed it onto the bed behind me, rolling my eyes as I headed towards the bathroom. Flo had been a Twihard since she'd spent nine quality in-flight hours with the books, and over the last few weeks she'd been wearing even _my_ colossal patience thin. It seemed like every other word out of her mouth was "Edward Cullen", not an easy feat considering how much she loved to talk. She'd even managed to get me to "read" the first book, though I still didn't quite understand her Cullen obsession.

But this was ridiculous even for HER. I'd believed her when she'd said that Stephenie Meyer's books were 'like, just the greatest _ever!!_', and that had clearly been a mistake. I certainly wasn't going to believe her down-the-rabbit-hole-and-back-again fantasies. I shook my head. This is what came of too much fanfiction and not enough sleep.

I turned the left knob on my sink (the hot and cold knobs were switched. I was always secretly hoping that my little brother would forget about it when he barricaded himself in my bathroom and cook his grubby hands a little). I wiped the mirror with a towel and stared, chuckling darkly. Flo wasn't the only one who needed sleep. With finals just around the corner, I was getting about as much shut-eye as Edward was getting tan. I ran tentative fingers over the dark circles under my green eyes and snorted. If Flo could see these, she'd clap her hands and say I looked like a Cullen.

I was so caught up in my own half-dead reflection that it took me some moments before I noticed the steady cloud of steam pouring up out of my sink.

"Shit." Had I turned the wrong knob? Had it been magically fixed while I was in class? I double-checked the handles and slipped cautious fingers beneath the tap.

Cold.

I raised an eyebrow and cocked my head to the side, steam still swirling around me, thicker than before. And then I felt it. A jerk in my stomach, like an invisible hand reaching through me and pulling me towards my reflection. My eyes flew wide, but my vision staggered and smeared, the world melting in front of me. It jerked again, stronger than before. I grabbed the counter, white-knuckled and woozy, fighting to retain consciousness, and failing. Another pull, another, _another_, each coming faster and more insistent than the last. The mist was pressing down on me from every direction, a dead weight squeezing over my entire body. Was I still holding onto the counter? My knees buckled. Darkness. There was a _pop!_, and-

**99999999999999999999999999999999999**

It hurt. It _hurt. _I rubbed my forehead and felt a throbbing lump pulsing just above my eyes.

"Shit." I hissed, gritting my teeth and trying to ignore the buzzing sound in my ears. There was an aching in my head and my gut, like I was going to throw up and pass out, but my body couldn't decide which to do first. But wait- I had already passed out, hadn't I? So was I… dead?

"Shhhit." My head was pounding. Was the afterlife supposed to be this painful?

"Are you with us, miss?" My eyes flew open, and took in all they could of the face floating inches away from my own. It glared at me, greasy and swollen. I could see that the words I'd mistaken for concern were clearly spoken in a last-warning frustration. I blinked, not sure what I'd done. He took in my blank stare for some minutes and then snorted incredulously into my face before swinging his massive form backwards and away from me. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding and looked around, mirroring the direction of the man's gaze as it came to rest on the occupant of a desk to my right.

"In that case, Jessica, perhaps _you_ could enlighten us as to the functions of the hypotenuse in calculating the angles of a triangle using the trigonometric functions?" he raised an accusing eyebrow in my direction, and I frowned in response. I knew trig function crap. I did that in seventh grade for God's sake.

"You mean the answer wasn't 'shit' Mr. Varner?" some boy at the back of the class volunteered enthusiastically to the low snickering of his classmates. The Mr. Varner in question turned his attention to the boy, walking past me and out of my line of sight, much to my relief.

"Hardly, Mr. Devries, and while I do like students to participate, I would prefer that you limit your future contributions to school-appropriate vocabulary."

"But I thought Bella's _always_ got the right answer." I turned in my seat to find this newest assailant glaring at my back, arms crossed, his left foot propped bouncing on his right knee as he sneered. "But I guess only _I _get in trouble for stuff like that in this class." His gaze left me to bore into the teacher's pouting face. _Good_, I thought to myself. His beef was with the teacher and anyone to that end, not with me specifically. But wait, hadn't he just called me-

"Report yourself to the disciplinary office, Mr. Devries, since you seem so desirous of spending more quality time in their care. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars." The students who had chuckled before grinned in spite of themselves as Varner glared the boy down. He looked like he wanted to add a few more choice comments, but instead he turned on his heel and strode back down the aisle toward the Jessica on my right. He flipped the book in his hand back open, resting it on the crook of his arm as he stopped in front of the terrified girl.

"Now then, if you would be so kind, Miss Stanley-"

_BRRRRRIINNNNNGGGGG!!_

I ducked my head to hide the broad smile that broke out at the chagrin on the teacher's face, which said clearly that he felt the bell had personally thwarted him. The class clamored with the sounds of books and folders being crammed hurriedly into bags before the students filed- or fled- out the door. I looked to my left and found an unclaimed stack of messy, bent-cornered notes and a folder with little hearts doodled in the corners. I stuck out my tongue before I could stop myself. Surely this wasn't _mine. _But hadn't that boy called me-

"Bella!" I turned to find the Jessica girl practically beaming at my side, one hand resting companionably on my shoulder. "Boy, what luck, right? I mean, for the bell to ring right at the exact minu- oh! Oh but I mean, it was awful what happened to you!" Her face morphed so quickly into a mask of concern that I half wanted to slap it to see if it would change again. I must have appeared unsatisfactorily cheered, because she turned the sweetness in her voice up a notch and she continued. "You know, that happened to me once before, right when we got back from Christmas break last year, in January I mean. I fell asleep in class too. But I didn't bang my head against the desk like that!" She giggled before she could stop herself. "I mean, that thonk was just terrible! Oh, look, you have a little bump, poor thing. No wonder you were swearing like that!" she rubbed cool fingers against my throbbing forehead and frowned contemplatively, thinking about it. Her face suddenly changed again, and she giggled. "But I was still a little surprised. You know? Oh, poor Bella, so accident-prone!"

A scraping chair on the other side of the room brought her attention back to the clock. She slapped her cheeks in not-so-mock drama. "Oh, gosh! We're going to be late for Spanish!" she said, flustered. She struck me as the type that said 'oh, gosh!' a lot. I followed her swift shuffle out of the room - off to Spanish, wherever that was. Wherever _I _was. But I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that was telling me I wasn't in Kansas anymore.

I walked purposely behind her and prayed she wouldn't turn around and ask me something on the way to - as I'd feared- building number six. We passed a banner hanging brightly across the gym, with "FIGHT ON, FORKIANS!" scrawled in yellow spray paint. I grimaced at the snow crunching beneath my feet and couldn't suppress the shudder that ran down my spine. Snow I was fine with, but Forks was something else entirely.

**99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER 2**

Preview:_ SOMEONE GET ME OUT OF THIS BOOK, I'M NOT ISABELLA SWAN! _So your best friend is such a Twihard that she's convinced she was sucked into the book itself. But what would you do if the same thing happened to **you**? This regular girl wishes she had paid a little more attention "reading" Twilight when she finds herself stuck inside it as her less-than-favorite protagonist, Bella Swan! But it's alright, Bella doesn't get eaten in the first book. ……right?!

**9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**

Disclaimer: In case you can't figure it out on your own, I don't own Twilight. PS: the sky is blue. Yes, I wish I owned Edward Cullen. Or, more specifically, his delicious 2007 Aston Martin Vanquish S………… wipes drool off keyboard

**99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**

**Death to the Non-Believer**

**Chapter 2**

"Y eso es todo hoy. Estudia bien, chicos!" The bell rang and the class filed slowly out the door to a cacophony of mumbled "sí"s and "hasta luego"s. I packed my bag slowly, apparently alone in my desire to put lunch off for as long as possible. I wondered if they had pad thai in Forks. Doubtful. I sighed. "Why couldn't I have been sucked into _Chopsticks_ or something?" I mumbled. When I turned to put my backpack on my desk, Jessica was at my shoulder again. She was a large part of the reason I was not looking forward to lunch, pad thai notwithstanding. She had spent the entire class sending me notes about so-and-so's hair, or such-and-such scandal, or did-you-_hear?_s. She now hovered on my right, folded arms held as if for dear life across her chest, rocking slightly back and forth on her heels. Her eyes tightened just a twinge at the edges, the only chink in her near-perfect goody-two-shoes façade that gave away her obvious frustration at my slowness.

I was pretty sure I was starting to hate her. Unfairly perhaps, I conceded as I started re-ordering the papers that had been passed out to us, taking as long as I could. I heard an insistent tap-tap-tap, and looked down to see Jessica's foot rudely urging me to hurry. I accidentally-on-purpose dropped my bag off the edge of the desk and - much to my surprise - onto the offending foot, and had to fight not to smile at the indignant yelp I got for my efforts. I put on my best oops-my-bad face and smiled apologetically up at her - I really had meant to just drop the bag next to her, not _on_ her- and said "sorry, accident-prone, remember?" I shrugged my hands at her helplessly, half expecting her to inspect them. I bent to pick up the spilled books and saw her glare at me through my periph, but when I looked back up she immediately switched back to her too-sweet best-friends-forever smile. I smiled in return. Either she already hated me on my first day at the new school for reasons I couldn't fathom - _Bella's first day_, I corrected myself - or she was just a bitch. I looked up into her drippingly sweet smile and felt my own wilt around the edges. I was betting on the latter. But that was still no reason for me to start dropping things on her. I was just anxious. Apparently being trapped in a fictional story you didn't even like will do that to your nerves - or so I was learning - especially if things in that story were eventually going to try to eat you. I was understandably unhinged. And if I remembered correctly, we were only in the middle of the first chapter; after all, I still hadn't even met-

I snorted. Jessica, momentarily forgotten, cocked her head at me and frowned a little. I must look insane, staring into space and snorting randomly. I zipped up my bag and pushed in my chair, watching the kaleidoscope of her features as they predictably turned from disdainful impatience to quivering excitement. Without a word she did a little hop-turn in place that made her hair bounce and proceeded almost skippingly out of the classroom. I rolled my eyes at her back and followed her in a more stately manner towards the Forks High School caf. She assaulted me with chatter the entire way. She was a gossipy little thing, divulging the most horrendous rumors and darkest secrets of people that I didn't know, and who I'm sure had no interest in my knowing the skeletons in their closets. I had a growing urge to tell the girl to just mind her own damn business.

If I tried, I could be friends with Jessica. I found it easy to be friends with almost anyone. Even though I could tell she secretly despised me, she was full of good jokes, and she had - to some small extent - taken me under her wing. I could find the good in her, I was sure. But right now, at this moment, with nowhere to escape from her frantic prattle as we tromped across the snowy the lawn, I wanted very badly for the earth to open up and swallow her, just for the sake of silence (or possible my sanity). My pace quickened, and soon we were at the swinging double doors of what must have been the cafeteria, and Jessica finally fell silent as she perused the lunch options. I had never been so relieved to smell turkey surprise.

I was wondering what else might shut her up when I noticed a blonde boy bounding cheerfully towards us. Jessica apparently noticed too, because she stiffened and then froze like a deer in headlights, carving her painted nails deeper into her binder with every approaching step. I was wondering whether she was going to swallow her tongue or break a nail first, when the boy was suddenly beside us.

"Hi, Mike!" she peeped sheepishly. I looked her full in the face, and I could see through her consuming blush that this smile was real. Interesting, I thought, cataloguing this response in my mental notes. Mike, in turn, was staring at me.

"Hey Jess, Bella." His blue eyes danced and his smile stretched from ear to ear, waiting expectantly.

"Hi, Mike." I echoed. His smile brightened a touch, and I couldn't help but smile in response. He was that type. This must be Fig- er, Mike Newton. He was cuter than I'd imagined him, but in the kind of way that made you want to pet your dog, nothing that would make me carve sections out of my binder in anticipation. He turned away from me, answering something Jessica asked him about another someone I didn't know. Yet. Though I seriously doubted you could not know anyone for very long in this tiny sneeze of a town. I grew up in a small town outside Los Angeles, and went to a high school with only three hundred students in my grade. Compared to the several thousand of most neighboring schools, I had thought mine tiny. Forks made my alma mater look like a behemoth. There couldn't have been more than five hundred people in the entirety of Forks High, let alone per grade. No wonder I kept running into the same faces every class- there probably weren't even enough students to have more than one class per subject. Jessica's overdone laughter brought me back to reality, and I realized someone behind me was politely coughing. I looked up to see Jessica and Mike. I was standing ten feet behind them. I shook my head, wondering what the Forkians would think of this new girl, the total space-case.

"Sorry" I said to the girl behind me, scuffling quickly forward. She was tall, and pretty, with dark hair and an easy smile.

"It's not a big deal, really. We're not even close to the register yet anyway," she said in a soft voice. She smiled again, walking forward into the space I left behind me. She was graceful for someone so leggy. And she was nice.

This one must be Angela. Had we - had she and _Bella_ - met yet in the book? Would it be strange of me to know her name? I couldn't remember, so I played it safe and kept quiet, rather than introduce myself twice or know her name before we'd met. I didn't need any more help looking crazy today.

But luckily, a few minutes later, she followed me and my garlic pasta to the table where I sat with Jessica, a gawking grease-ball that could only have been Eric Yorkie, and a few others who I was eager to identify - it was becoming a kind of silly game of guess-who for me. Mike Newton – wisely – chose a spot a few tables away, much to Jessica's chagrin. Angela sat across from me, a few seats down, and smiled again. We were going to be friends, I could tell. That is, if I was here that long…

I was spared from this train of thought by a sudden explosion of giddy laughter, and I brought my gaze out of my pasta and up. I stared. A sandy-haired girl walking amidst the tables paused with her friend, laughing so hard she seemed to be struggling to maintain a grasp on her tray. I wondered what joke she'd told. Of course, she didn't hold my attention for long. She continued walking and my gaze remained caught on the table behind her, and its unique occupants.

**9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**


	3. Chapter 3

**Death to the Non-Believer**

**Chapter 3**

It only took a moment – the briefest flash of bright copper – to know whose table my gaze had stumbled upon. They hadn't spotted me yet, or rather, _he_ hadn't. I stared, allowing my unnoticed eye to wander over the strange quintet. The book (or at least what I'd read of it so far) did them no justice: I had pictured them as wiry, tired, sickly-pale, but what I saw sitting just yards away were veritable gods. Their skin wasn't just pale, anemic as it had sounded in text, it was pure and shining, as if my own white skin was a cheap, tarnished imitation. Only now could I understand what Bella had meant by 'dazzling', if even that was even a strong enough description.

Rosalie stood out the most of her 'siblings', exuding an aura of seduction that drew the eyes of those who passed her like flies to honey. Her hair was not just some flat blonde like what Meyer described, but sun-spun golden locks that curled as if they had been precisely carved into place by a master craftsman, her bloodless lips somehow a perfect rosy red in a flawless face. Only her dark eyes seemed out of place in the still faultless perfection of her beauty. I wondered what color they had been when she was alive as she took the hand of the burly figure beside her. Surely this was Emmet? I grinned: he really was a bear. He was taller, broader, generally more massive than I'd thought he would be, as if my eyes could feel the weight of all his muscle from across the room. His dark brown hair was cut short, framing his ever-beaming face. He had a funny little nose that I hadn't expected, almost too delicate for someone of his sheer physical presence. Though his eyes were the same color as Rosalie's, they seemed inviting, warm, where hers had felt distant – _and probably condescending_, I thought. Jasper, too, was a surprise. His hair was cute, a kind of lightly curled dirty blonde, as if he could grow it out and look like Boticelli's Venus. His face, his entire body was stern and taught, leaking tension even with his hands at his sides and his eyes fixed firmly on his feet. Alice sat beside him. Only she was exactly as I had imagined her: delicate, with dark hair, and something about the way she carried herself that made it seem like she was dancing even though she sat totally still. To her left sat the last member of their little group. When my eyes fell on him, I found him already staring at me. I held his gaze – it was my personal policy not to look away when you met someone's eyes, because it always made me feel like I'd been caught doing something wrong – but why was he…

I re-entered the world around me and realized that Jessica was already well into her dish to Bella on the Cullens; no doubt she had alerted him somehow, but was it her thoughts he had heard? Or was it his heightened sense of hearing that had caught his name on her lips? I couldn't remember. Could he tune them out, or focus in on one thinker, or one area? Or was it just a constant cacophonous assault? I was beginning to wish I'd paid more attention or at least read a little more of the book as Jessica chattered on beside me. "That's Rosalie and Emmet, and Jasper and Alice, and Edward." My brain was finally tuning in to what Jessica was saying. "They're siblings."

"Siblings?" I found myself asking, though I was already well aware of their unique living situation. I stabbed a forkful of pasta – it had started to get cold while I'd been sucked into my Cullen viewing.

"Yeah. It's a total _scandal_, too, because they're all _together!_" Jessica seemed to become more and more intoxicated with each word, leaning in ever closer, waiting for my eyes to fly wide with satisfactory indignation.

"Oh." I said flatly, still focused on my food. Her anxious face immediately fell in disappointment. I looked up from my tray to find him still staring unabashed. "Who's the one with the auburn hair?" I asked, not moving my gaze from the frustrated Cullen. I already knew the answer.

"Burn?" Jessica asked. He closed his eyes as she spoke, no doubt trying to focus in on the sound of my thoughts. I wondered: did thoughts sound like the voices of the thinker, or did all the thoughts come to him in his own mental voice, as if he were reading to himself? "What burn?"

I made a face. Small town, small vocabulary. "Reddish-brown," I amended, looking up at Jessica with a little distain. "Which one is the guy with the reddish-brown hair?" He was in my peripheral vision, so I couldn't be sure, but I thought I saw our subject chuckle.

"That's _Edward._ He's gorgeous, of course," – for once I had to agree – "but don't waste your time. He doesn't date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him." She sniffed and finally granted me some silence while she chewed her sandwich indignantly and glared at the Cullen table. She was so bitter it was leaving a bad taste in my mouth; but considering that – from what I could tell – Edward ended up with Bella, the one girl _not_ from Forks, I was inclined to agree with Jessica.

But now Bella was me, or I was Bella, so did that mean…

How close to the story would the plot stay without the real Bella? Would Edward still fall for...? _Ha. _I was certainly never going to fall for a protagonist with as much character depth as a parking lot puddle, no matter how gorgeous or immortal he was. Come to think of it, was my mind even unreadable to him, if I weren't the real Bel-

I struggled to hide my moment of panic at the horrible realization that Edward might, in fact, be able to hear every single word of what I thought, of what I'd been thinking since the minute I dropped into Forks. After all, the only mind he couldn't listen in on was Bella's, and I wasn't Bella – not really. How would I explain away everything that had been running through my head in just the past few minutes? And if he found out that I already knew for certain that they were vampires, they would surely-

I looked up again to find Edward still staring, flummoxed, clearly growing upset, and I heaved a sigh of relief. Apparently I was Bella enough for that aspect of the story's purpose. My confidence renewed, I met his heated amber gaze with my own level one, locked for several silent moments... and then suddenly did something that the real Bella would never have done: I smiled at him. He jerked back as if I had slapped him. I knew exactly what caused that look of consternation - quickly replaced by shock – which spread across his features, and giggled to myself at the tumult that must be rolling over his usually tedious thoughts.

For the first time in his unnatural life, Edward Cullen actually _wanted_ to hear a human's thoughts, and could not. The irony of it was too delicious. If he weren't so beautiful, I might have even pitied him. But beautiful he was. My smile faded as he continued to stare at me, flabbergasted. I let my eyes roam over his features, the soft curve of his lip, the straight line of his nose, the smoothness of his high cheekbones, his furrowed brow, and those deep, shark-like predatory eyes that grew more consumed with me with every passing heartbeat. I felt my throat tighten in spite of myself.

No, Edward Cullen was not at all what I had expected.

**9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**

**A.N.: Sorry this was such a quickie. It's short because I'm in the middle of the next chapter, and I'm not sure where I'm going to break that up.**

**Gosh, I haven't updated this in like... months and months. Sorry. I transferred to University a while back, and I've been swamped with that. In a good way :) In any case, forgive any spelling mistakes/grammar errors/random bits that obviously don't go in the story, if you come across them. I basically wrote and re-did 6000+ words in a day. LOL.**

**On a separate note, does anyone have a copy of Twilight they can send me (preferably PDF)? I don't have one anymore... OTL**


	4. Chapter 4

**9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**

**Death to the Non-Believer**

**Chapter 4**

Luckily, the Cullens left their table long before the end of lunch, leaving me to enjoy my pasta in relative peace, (though there was no escape from Jessica's ever-running mouth). This was going to be interesting. I couldn't deny that Edward Cullen was attractive, especially compared to what I'd imagined, but I wasn't harboring any outlandish school-girl fantasies, either; and regardless of how intriguing the real Edward Cullen might be, I needed to find a way out of this book and back to the real world before things started getting hairy. My only advantage in Twilight's world was my pre-knowledge of the plot – to a point - but I had only skimmed a _part_ of the book, and I knew that even that vague information was going to run out somewhere towards the middle chapters. I didn't even know if the book would _stick_ to the original plot, without its original Bella.

I sat anxiously chewing on my fork for several minutes after I had finished eating, trying to think of something – _anything_ – that I could do. After all, I still had no clue how I'd even gotten here, let alone how I could get back. As my grandma would've said, I was in one _dilly_ of a pickle.

"Um, w-what's your next class, Bella?" My fork fell from my mouth, and I looked up to try to identify the speaker, but instead met the confused and somewhat wary eyes of the entire table. I needed to stop spacing out in public, or I was going to spend the rest of this story in a psych ward, if Forks even had one.

"Bella?" Ah, it was Angela. She was looked nervous. I smiled.

"Sorry, I was thinking about something that Señora said in class," I lied. "What did you say?"

"I, um, I was wondering what your next class was. I thought… I thought maybe I could point it out if you needed help." I was starting to love this girl.

"That would be great, thanks!" I dug in my bag for my schedule as Jessica looked on, frowning. Apparently she didn't want to share her new toy with anyone. The bell rang and the rest of our lunchmates departed as I pulled a crumpled pink paper out of my bag. "Looks liiiiike… oh, biology!" It was a pleasant surprise. I liked biology: I'd taken enough AP and college level bio to ignore whatever they would be teaching in this tiny backwater high school. I was looking forward to taking a long, relaxing nap: I seriously needed to de-stress.

"Oh! Me too!" Angela piped, before blushing and falling silent again. The day was looking up. "It's just over this way, shall we go together?" she asked. I smiled again as I stood and collected my tray.

"I'd love to."

We walked briskly through a long hallway with lockers on both sides, collecting the gaze of fellow students as we passed. Some smiled, some waved, a few bold ones even came up to me and said "Hi, Bella!" or tried to high five me. I was already familiar with how fast word travels in a small town, but this was something else. We arrived at a doorway towards the end of the hall with a placard that read "Mr. Banner" overhead, and one of the boys going in before us kindly held the door as we stepped into biology. I scanned the room as I headed down the aisle to the teacher's desk. I had been hoping that I could sit with Angela, but as I surveyed the room I saw that there was only one empty seat, next to-

I made a disgruntled face as I passed a heating vent that blasted me with hot air – I'd always been fonder of the cold - but as I looked at him, I saw Edward make a face as well. It wasn't from discomfort. If I hadn't been staring at him, I would have missed it: the momentary twist of his lips, the sudden twitch of his body as every muscle in it snapped abruptly to attention, and his eyes, so darkly beautiful just seconds before, seeping into a deep, soulless black. I froze. Maybe it was some kind of animal instinct? The prey stiffening wide-eyed in the face of the predator.

It was a mistake.

The fan continued to blow through my hair, past me and towards Edward, sending gusts of hot air laden with my – with _Bella's_ – scent across the room. I was in trouble, and I knew it. I racked my brain. _Why hadn't I remembered the fan??_ Struggling through panic, I reclaimed my body: I stepped futilely out of the vent's path, and turned to Mr. Banner to ask if I could sit somewhere else – _anywhere_ else. But there was only one empty seat, and the script to this drama was already pre-set. There was nothing I could do. But… Bella didn't die in the first chapter, right?? My stomach was somersaulting as I gathered my books and marched up the aisle toward my seat – and hopefully not to my demise. It was all as I remembered: Edward was curled up in his seat, as if even by taking up less space he could avoid ruining the "vegetarian" life he'd no doubt worked so hard to create, as if every millimeter further from me made me – made both of us – safer from him. The chair creaked in his effort to huddle away from me, like he was a cornered rabbit. How ironic.

"Miss Swan, please be seated so that we may begin." I didn't even realize I'd been standing in the aisle, putting off that inevitable moment which might set everything off. What could I do? What could I _do_?

I sat. Unlike the Bella from the story, I knew exactly what caused my new lab partner to give me the cold shoulder, and I had the same thing on my mind as he did: _distance_, and fast. I scraped my chair as far as I could to the right, edging so that I was almost halfway into the aisle. I watched Edward as he unknowingly mirrored my movements. I shoved my hair – _Bella's hair –_ into my hood, threw it over my head, and zipped the jacket to the top, covering every inch of skin and hair I could, sealing in the fatal scent like a Tupperware container. Afraid to catch his eye, I stared at Edward's hands, which rhythmically stretched and then clenched into fists in his lap, as if keeping time with the heartbeat he didn't have. I watched out of the corner of my eye as they slipped beneath the table, and nearly jumped when I heard the table give a whispered _crunch_ somewhere beneath my fists. This was going downhill _fast_.

I sidled even further away, leaning over the side of the lab table, straining to put even more space between us, as Edward began to _tap-tap-tap_ his foot. It made me even more nervous. I wanted to be further than the end of the lab table would allow: out of the room, out of town – the ends of the earth didn't seem distant enough. Edward's hands reappeared from beneath the desk, grains of sawdust stuck to the tips of his long fingers. I needed to escape, and soon. My head reeled, rambling through the possibilities.

All I had to do was get out of class, just out of the room. A few minutes without my scent pressing on him, that would be enough for Edward to talk himself into keeping his distance. Right? I was hoping that the desire for his family's safety out-weighed Edward's desire for my blood. _Bella._ I corrected myself. _Not mine, Bella's. _I could play sick, go to the nurse, make a run for the truck… I raised my hand in relief.

To my horror, the movement tossed my hood off my head, sending hair spinning in his direction, fanning the air...

_Shit._

He didn't turn, didn't blink. Maybe he hadn't— his foot slammed silently to a stop.

_SHIT._

My pulse thudded in my throat, but I dared not look at him. Dared not even breathe. Surely he wouldn't kill me here, now, in class? From what my frantic thoughts could recall he and his family were flying below the radar, and brutally slaughtering and devouring the new girl wasn't exactly low-profile; so maybe I was somewhat safe. I let out a tiny sigh, though the thought did little to comfort me. I was sitting just a few feeble inches away from a killing machine.

As if he'd heard me, Edward's head snapped towards me so quickly that at first I didn't even realize he'd moved. The look in his eyes let my body confirm what my brain had already sorted out: the only thing that had been keeping me alive even thus far was this room full of some two dozen innocent witnesses. It wouldn't take long for word to spread about the Cullen boy eating a girl in Bio, and to silence them he'd have to kill at least everyone in the room. Safety in numbers. But once I was separated from the others, after class, after school, maybe on the road on the way home… he would take the opportunity and kill me somewhere where no one would see or hear, where he would have to silence no one but me. Only then would the creature inside him, burning out at me through his black, black eyes, be satisfied. I stared unblinking and quietly horrified at him and knew that it was true in a sinking part of my gut that I'd never noticed before. My stomach lurched: if I left to play hooky, wandering all alone on the unfamiliar school grounds, it would be all too easy for him to...

My heart was pounding so hard in my throat that I could scarcely breathe. I was sure he could hear it. Was this terror? This pressure of impending death, the lamb before the slaughter. That saying about the lion and the lamb that I'd seen plastered over so many t-shirts and icons in the past months seemed sickeningly laughable now. I couldn't strike out alone, but I couldn't stay here either. How long could Edward cage his beast? I was going to die if I stayed here, in this seat, in this classroom, in this book with this monster who craved my blood. With every second that passed I became more and more certain.

And I hated him. In that minute, with every fiber of my being, I hated Edward Cullen as I have never hated another human being – if you could call him that – before or since. Why did he even have to be here? In this world, in this town, this school, this _damn _class… why was I in this book? Had I been throttled into this fiction just to face my own end?? It wasn't fair. It wasn't _fair!_ If I died in the book, would the real me die, too? Was my real existence tied to Bella's? Or was it all just a dream, and Bella's death would find me in my bed at home in a cold sweat?

Maybe I should be brave, and walk out of the class before he snapped, and was forced — by his reasoning — to kill everyone in the room to prevent them from outing him and his family for what my death would prove they were: monsters. Maybe I should sacrifice myself — my dream self, or whatever me-Bella was — for these people. They didn't need to die just because I'd had the unfortunate luck of falling into Forks this morning—

I shook my head. People? Were they even that? Could these fictional characters (and very possibly figments of my imagination) even die?

"Yes, Miss Swan?" I froze, and my eyes flew wide as I snapped out of my stupor.

"Did you have a question?" I looked up at Mr. Banner, panicked, but puzzled why — and then I realized that my arm, my traitorous, sinister arm, was still raised high above my head.

_**SHIT!!!**_

"Um…" Edward tensed beside me. No doubt my breath would drive him even crazier. _Please hold your breath, _I thought as loudly as I could, screaming it in my head, _please hold your breath! _ I knew he couldn't hear me.

"Um…" I couldn't ask to leave. Oh, _God_, I couldn't ask to leave. But I had no idea what were even talking about. _SO MUCH FOR NOT SPACING OUT ANYMORE, GENIUS._

"Don't be shy, Miss Swan," said Mr. Banner kindly from the front of the room. "Don't worry, I won't bite," he continued with a little chuckle. _Too bad your teeth aren't the ones I have to worry about,_ I thought. I looked at the classmates around me, doing some kind of lab, chatting amongst themselves, oblivious.

"Um… well…" Edward's eyes flicked to me, and I nearly bit off my own tongue. Was his lip curling, or was it just my imagination?

"Yes, Miss Swan?" The seconds ticked by like hours. Edward's black gaze was unrelenting, pressing down on me until I couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, couldn't stand it, his hands shot onto the table-

"EDWARD!!" I cried.

The class went dead silent. Edward froze. I froze, terrified, trapped in the gaze of the predator like a deer in headlights. The silence dragged on. The time that had been flooding by just heartbeats before had slowed to a molasses-crawl.

"…what _about _Edward, Miss Swan?" I couldn't move. The next time I turned my head, Edward was going to tear it off my shoulders. I stared at Edward. Edward glared at me. The entire class stared at us. No one moved.

"E-Edward…" It came out as an almost inaudible whisper, our eyes still locked, his thirst bubbling to the surface. "Edward, h-he…" My voice cracked. _Shit, THINK._ "He…H-he……" _SHIT!!_ "He… uh… he…" _Think, think, THIN – _

"_THE NURSE!"_ I yelled, startling the class.

"What?"

"Th-the nurse, sir!!" I repeated, more evenly but no less frantic. My gaze was still ensnared by his as I continued. "Edward is… um, not feeling well, sir. He needs to go to the nurse." Edward blinked, for what seemed like the first time all day, and I was able to turn my eyes toward Mr. Banner, though I kept every other muscle frozen. "He needs to go _now_, sir." Mr. Banner took one look at Edward's smoldering gaze and conceded.

"Very well, Mr. Cullen, you may report to the Health Office, you can just –" In a single fluid motion, Edward thrust himself up from the desk and was already halfway out the door. He didn't look back.

Mr. Banner rushed outside after him, yelling something about a note. I nearly fainted with relief.

"What was _that_ all about?" I turned to find Mike leaning in from behind me.

"Yeah," offered a bland-looking boy to his left "what was his deal? I've never seen Edward like that." I was hoping the questions were meant to be supportively rhetorical. I could tell by the boys' expectant faces that they were not.

"U-um… uh, well…" their eyes were merciless. "Uh, I think…" _God, _I hated this stupid book. "Um, to tell you the truth…" I leaned in conspiratorially as they did the same, their eyes widening. I looked from one to the other. I didn't need rocket science to pull one over on these two. "I think he smelled… I think he smelled kind of bad, and he didn't want anyone to sit next to him because he didn't want anyone to know."

For a few seconds they were silent, and I worried that maybe they were smarter than I gave them credit for, but when I looked at Mike, he burst out laughing, joined by a number of students around him.

"HA!" Mike said, hands wrapped around his chest. "FIGURES!"

**9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**

**A/N: Sorry, this really needs to be edited more, but I'm tired. lol. Oh, and I STILL NEED A PDF OF TWILIGHT. IF ANYONE HAS IT. PLEEEEASE.**


	5. Chapter 5

**9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**

**Death to the Non-Believer**

**Chapter 5**

"So how are you liking Forks? Bella? …_Bella?_"

"Huh?" I had tuned out Mike so well that I barely remembered he was talking to me. I felt a little guilty. After all, he was showing me the way to gym class (thankfully the last of the day), which was very kind of him. My obvious inattention apparently did little to deter him.

"How are you liking Forks?" he repeated with a 50-watt smile.

"A lot, actually," I answered honestly. "It's nice and cold here. And I love the grey…" I looked up and the swirling, cloudy sky, and my heart leapt. "Ahhh…" I closed my eyes and smiled. I loved the rainy, overcast, cold and grey. It made me feel calm and happy and wonderful. And if nothing else, Forks was full of that. When I opened my eyes, I saw that Mike was staring at me, a somewhat pleased expression on his face. It sobered me instantly.

"Uh, yeah, so what about you, Mike?"

"Huh?"

"Um, like… do you like the weather… in Forks?" Even though I was genuinely interested in what type of weather people preferred, I always felt a little ridiculous falling into the cliché.

"Oh. Well, yeah, it's not bad. I lived in California till I was ten, though, so I guess I'm more of a sunshine guy at heart."

"California? No way!" Who knew that real people from real places could find their way to this spec of a town? "Norcal or Socal?"

"Southern California. Eagle Rock. I guess you've never heard of it—"

"EAGLE ROCK??" I could tell as he twitched back that I had startled him with my sudden outburst. It occurred to me that the real Bella was probably a little more shy than I was. Like maybe, say, about a billion times more. "Dude," (the real Bella probably didn't use 'dude', either), "I lived in Pasadena!" I said excitedly, naming a city just minutes away from Eagle Rock.

"I… I thought you lived in Phoenix?" My excitement vanished.

"Er, well, yeah, I mean, I _did_, but I uh, went to Pasadena every summer and holidays and stuff, so uh, it feels like I lived there. Pretty much." I was getting better at thinking on my feet. Hopefully Mike wouldn't realize my story's obvious loophole, which I remembered only after I'd finished: surely Bella spent her summers here, in Forks? With her father? And some childhood friends or something…

"Oh, yeah, I know how that goes." Mike smiled somewhat apologetically. He wasn't my type, but he did seem awfully sweet. Especially compared to some of the other Forks residents I'd met that day…

"So, are you sure you didn't stab Edward Cullen with a pencil or something?" Speak of the devil. "I've never seen him act like that, even if he _did_ smell, heh. Did you make a face at him or something? He looked _pissed._" Oh, no, this line of questioning wouldn't do at all.

"The boy I sat next to in Biology?" I asked dumbly, "I dunno, he was trying to stay away from me but…"

We reached the front of a large, round-topped structure which could only be the gym building, and turned towards an old hanging sign with "Locker" scrawled across it.

"It was more than that though, he looked like he was in pain or something." Maybe Mike Newton was sharper than his written description and puppy dog demeanor had led me to believe. Or maybe he was just too thick to realize that his prodding could be seen as rude. Not that I minded. I just didn't want to blow it, and I was still in a less-than-ideal state of jitters after my Biology lesson _of DEATH_.

"Well, I was kind of trying to distance myself, you know, maybe he noticed that. I hope I didn't hurt his feelings," I half-lied. I'd lied more in the last few hours than I had in the last year combined.

"He's a weird guy," Mike supplied, pausing for a long moment against the wall at the entrance to the locker rooms. He dropped his voice and leaned towards me. "If I were lucky enough to sit by you, I would have talked to you."

I don't know what my reply would have been, because he looked down, and turned and made his escape into the boys' locker room. I was left standing blushing and a bit stunned for a moment, blocking the door to the girls' locker. Mike was nice, but he still gave me the urge to pat his head like a puppy.

I turned to wander into the locker room when a huge hand gripped my shoulder, straining like it was going to detach from my body. I had done it. I'd let myself be alone. I'd assumed that, given the chance, Edward would have vanished by now. It didn't occur to me that he might have merely been stalking me from the shadows. I clenched my eyes shut, as if the strike would only hurt if I could see it coming.

"Isabella Swan?" My eyes popped open again. "That's you, right?" I spun round as the pressure on my shoulder eased. I was looking into the chest of a large, burly man with greying hair who looked like he had stepped out of a Texas high school football documentary. He had matching red warm-ups, whistle, and cap that said "Ball it or Beat it" in white stitching across the front. His beer belly under all that red made him look like a Santa trainee.

"Are you Isabella Swan?"

"Bella," I corrected automatically, and was suddenly unnerved. I didn't want people calling me Isabella _or _Bella.

"All right, follow me, we'll get you a uniform today, and you can wash it when you get home and bring it to wear tomorrow. Just take study period on the benches today." I was a little disappointed that he didn't have either a Midwestern-military-coach accent or a bowl-full-of-jelly laugh. I was even more disappointed when I climbed the bleachers to find volleyball nets set up on the polished courts below. Volleyball was one of my favorites – I played varsity… back home. Or should I say back in the real world? I shook my head and dug in my bag for my trig binder. I could contemplate the existentialism of my situation when I got home. _Bella's_ home. _Bella_, I told myself, _not me_.

I wondered if I would even have been able to play volleyball in Bella's body anyway: she was significantly shorter than the real me, and though she wasn't out of shape, she was… squishy. She didn't seem to have an entire ounce of muscle in her whole body. Not to mention the fact that she was an infamous klutz, one of the few things the real Bella and I shared. I wondered how much of my coordination would be transferred to Bella while I inhabited her, or if it was just my consciousness. What was something I would know that Bella wouldn't? I tried to think…

"If y=x3, then y'=3x2…" If my calculus knowledge was still there, I was betting all of my brain was.

But if it was my mind and not Bella's, why couldn't Edward access it? Where was the line between real-me and Bella-me drawn? I looked at my – at Bella's – scrawny arms and flat chest, I tugged on her thick brown hair with her tiny slender fingers. I was definitely not in my body. This was Bella's flesh and (unfortunately) blood. I gave up completely on trig, and pulled out a pen: I knew how to twirl a pen, the same way Jonny Depp flips the coin between his fingers in Pirates of the Caribbean: not a common skill. I put the pen between my fingers and began. I stuck my tongue out in concentration. It was difficult, but not impossible, so I wasn't as spastic as Bella, but I still wasn't quite myself, either. Maybe my experience added to Bella's total lack of coordination made for a muddled middle ground of potential. It made sense. If anything that had happened today could possibly be said to make sense.

The bell rang and I half leapt out of my seat, caught off-guard in my little experiment. _Spacing. Out. STOP IT._ I began zipping up my pencil bag and noticed the forgotten little pink slip peeking out from behind a highlighter. I pulled it out as Mike came trotting up the bleachers. Maybe I should-

"Hey, Bella, not feeling well?" he asked sympathetically.

"Aw, no, I just don't have a P.E. uniform yet."

"Oh, good, then-"

"Hey Mike, sorry, I gotta drop this off," I interrupted, brandishing the paper. "Could you point me towards the office?" He looked slightly crestfallen.

"Yeah, sure, come with me, I'm parked that way anyway."

"Great, thanks," I smiled over my shoulder, stuffing the rest of my things into my bag before swinging it over one arm and following him towards the double-doors. I wondered if P.E. was a requirement. "Hey, do you guys have, like, sports teams here?" I asked as I followed at his heels.

"Oh… You mean like football and stuff?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, we do."

"Oh, great!" I breathed as we stepped out into a light drizzle. God, I loved the weather in Forks. "Maybe I can do Swim or something instead of P.E. then. Do you know who the coach is? Maybe after I go to the office I can-" the look on his face stopped me. "What?"

"Well, we don't have a Swim coach," he said gently.

"Well, that's silly, how can you have a team without a… oh." I frowned. "But I thought you said Forks had sports teams and stuff!"

"Uh, well, we have football." Apparently 'and stuff' had no semantic value within the borders of Forks.

"Oh. Well… well that SUCKS," I pouted. I'd been doing sports year round since 8th grade. I didn't like the idea of being relegated to P.E. "Not that I should be surprised…" I mumbled under my breath.

"What was that, Bella?"

"Oh, nothing," I sighed with false cheer. Small towns, small schools: hard to get a lot of teams together, I supposed. Not that they would have anyone to play anyway, out here in the middle of Nowheresville, Washington. "Oh, hey, I can see the office. I can make it from here. Thanks a million, Mike!" I ran off through the wind towards the little beige building before he could offer to carry my books or give me a ride or whatever else. I'd already taken up enough of his time. I gripped the cold metal handle of the main door and stood with it open for a moment, trying to scrape and tap the mud and moisture off the bottom of my shoes.

"Maybe you should talk to your parents about that," said the lady behind the counter. I looked up and saw she was already helping another student, so I continued tap-tapping my boots before stepping inside.

"Please, Mrs. Cope?" Oh, whoever it was, I liked his voice. It was smooth – deep but also light, and a little scratchy at the bottom. I gave a little smirk. Hopefully the speaker would be as attractive as his voice. "Isn't there some other section I could switch to?" he continued. "I'm sure there has to be another slot somewhere? Sixth hour biology can't be the only option…"

I froze, my heart drumming in my chest. I looked up from my shoes to stare at a broad back and familiar tousled copper hair. Apparently Bella and I also shared our phenomenally horrible luck. But seconds ticked by, and Edward didn't try to rip my throat out, or even turn around. Maybe I was down-wind (or down-fan) of him. I spun silently on my heel towards the door.

"Well, maybe I could talk to Bob," continued the suspiciously appeasing office woman, "I mean Mr. Banner." Her flirty laugh covered the click of the knob as I grasped and turned it, sweating bullets. "I could see if-"

"AGHHH!"

"WAHHH!"

I screamed, and the girl screamed, and the receptionist gave a little "oh!" as the door swung open on me and hit me in the face with a loud _kuh-thonk_, unleashing a blast of cool air that swept through the tiny office. The clueless girl on the other side walked through and immediately started yelling sorry over and over. She didn't know how sorry she was going to be.

I ignored her fussing and turned to look at Edward. He continued to look away from me, hands white-knuckled as they balled into fists at his sides. It was hard to believe that I was staring at the same back, the same person as I had been just heartbeats before. Every line of his body was screaming violent constraint. Or maybe the screaming was me, in my head. _Please, God_, I prayed, _PLEASE don't let me have a nosebleed!!!_

My face throbbed, and for a flash my eyes rolled back in my head. I was _not_ going to pass out and bleed on the floor in the room with Edward freaking I-want-to-suck-you-dry-like-a-Caprisun-pack Cullen! I pinched my nose closed and tilted it upward, holding my breath, begging the God, my life, the _universe_ tojust once, just this _once_, give me a little bit of luck and let Edward Cullen walk out of the office. Without killing anyone. That part was really important. Careful what you wish for.

As if I'd called him, Edward turned, excruciatingly slow, and glared at me. Maybe he _could_ read my mind. I felt my arms and legs break out in goosebumbs, and fought not to shudder, faint, or – worst of all – bleed. He stared for just a fraction of a second, and then turned back to the counter so suddenly it hurt my neck to even watch.

"Never mind, then," he said in a clipped voice, much more angry but no less suave than before. "I can see that it's impossible. Thank you so much for your help." Before she could reply, he rotated on his heel, and stormed past me without giving me so much as a backward glance; then he was suddenly out the door and gone.

I sat, unable to move for the second time that day, for several long minutes, as the door-assailant continued to coo over me in a panic, totally unaware of how close we had all come to meet our maker because she had to man-handle the damn door. I think my continued silence was starting to make her think she'd damaged my brain.

The receptionist stood up then, suddenly aware of my predicament without Edward to enthrall her. My nose wasn't bleeding, but the steadily worsening throb in my nose and cheeks told me I was going to have a big, stupid-looking bruise plastered across the middle of my face. Though compared to agonizing death by dismemberment and devouring, a giant stupid bruise was certainly an upgrade.

"How did your first day go, dear?" the oblivious office woman asked in a motherly tone. I stared at her in stunned disbelief.

"Fine," I answered with a sarcastically sweet smile. She didn't look convinced.

**9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**

**A/N: I finished a whole chapter in one day! YAY ME. Haha. Just wanted to say THANKS SO MUCH GUYS. All your emails and comments have really been making my day lately. And a special thank you to S.K., who provided me with copies of the ENTIRE Twilight series!! I LOVE YOU!!!**


	6. Chapter 6

**99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**

**Death to the Non-Believer**

**Chapter 6**

It took almost an hour between explanations, ice, and convincing the receptionist not to call Chief Swan, for me to finally end up at the nurse's office. It took less than ten minutes for the nurse to thoroughly inspect me, deem me non-terminal, and send me on my less than merry way. It wasn't until after I'd left the nurse and started heading towards the parking lot that I realized I had no idea where the parking lot was. I obviously couldn't ask for directions, since even Bella wouldn't have forgotten the lot where she had parked just that morning. Mike had said something about parking near the office… Luckily the deserted campus left no one to witness my aimless wandering before I finally stumbled upon the parking lot, which stretched narrowly along one side of the school. It was no where near the office. It occurred to me that I had no idea what Bella's infamous truck looked like, or even where her keys were, but once I rounded a corner I realized it would be easy to find, since the lot was totally barren. In fact, I didn't see _any_ vehicles, Bella's included. I continued to walk down the lot, rounding a corner building that I had already forgotten the name of when I saw it: the beast.

I screamed and broke into a run down the sloped lot. It was _beautiful._ It was a behemoth, an ancient road warrior… and now, it was mine. I was stunned. I ran my hands over the aged, sun-bleached red paint, walked around to its bed and felt the thick curves which had gone out of production in the sixties at the latest. It wasn't a truck: it was a _tank_. I remembered an old battered blue truck that I used to pass on the way home from school years ago, and how I had thought it must have resembled Bella's car. I had been totally wrong. Nothing could have matched the corroded majesty of my rusty giant. I could have mowed down redwood forests with this baby. If I had been the mowing down redwood forests type. I resisted the urge to hug the driver's side door when I came to it, glad that no one had seen the odd greeting ritual.

I dug into my left pocket without thinking, and pulled out a drab set of keys. I would have to fix that – I was obsessed with danglies and keychains and the like. I climbed (literally) into the looming cab of the truck, and tossed my backpack on the passenger's seat, taking in the cracked beige leather that covered the interior. It just needed a cross hanging from the rearview, and it would be perfect. Or maybe something else. I might need to wear my crosses if I stayed in this book much longer. Or did that not work on Edward… I couldn't remember. I jammed the key into the ignition and let out a sigh of satisfaction as the truck roared deafeningly to life all around me. It was like riding in the belly of an angry bear. I was about to put it into gear when my hand paused: I had no idea how to put it into gear. In my excitement, I had conveniently forgotten that I had only just started learning to drive back home: I couldn't drive an auto-shift more than five miles an hour, let alone this hulking, stick-shifting beast. I looked down at my feet and stared at an ominous third pedal I had never seen before, which I could only assume was the clutch. At least the break and the gas were still in the same place… I think.

I glanced out the window. I glanced at my feet. I stared at the wheel. I stared at the clutch again.

This would not end well.

I contemplated calling Chief Swan, telling him the truck had broken down… of course then when he got to the school and realized it was fine, I would still be expected to drive it home. Did Forks have Triple-A? Doubtfully. Maybe if it was close I could push—

_Yeah, RIGHT._

Ok, obviously I couldn't push this thing two inches, let alone all the way home. Maybe I could… Maybe… I…

_Dammit._

I sat there in my metal monster, completely stumped. I might as well pull out the keys and walk… I looked down at the keys, clutched in my finger tips, still in the ignition, half turned, and it dawned on me: I hadn't known where the keys had been. I would have had no way of knowing, without even a bulge or a jingle-jangle in the puffy coat to give it away. Yet I'd reached for them automatically… just as I'd corrected Coach Clapp to "Bella" automatically…

Maybe… no. Could I?? No. It was preposterous!! …but _maybe_…

"Ok, Bella," I said out loud, "if you're in there somewhere… _make my day_." I sat back and stared at the steering wheel again, waiting for inspiration to strike.

"Ok," I repeated in the stillness. A frog croaked somewhere in the distance. "….aaaaaanytime now."

Nothing happened.

_DAMMIT. _

I breathed slowly out and in. There was no alternative. I hoped driving a stick shift wasn't as hard as it looked. I hoped driving a _tank_ wasn't as hard as it looked. Knowing my luck, it was probably even worse. Oh well. Maybe I could figure it out.

_Fat chance_, said a nagging voice of reason in my head. I sighed.

"Ok, let's do this." I was a space case _and_ I talked to myself. Maybe I was actually totally insane, and all of this was just a hallucination. I paused on that for a moment: it made more sense than anything else had all day. Apparently, even in my own hallucinations I couldn't drive. Great. I took the keys back out of the ignition, then back in and turned. I closed my eyes and rested my hands on the steering wheel. My foot stretched out for the clutch. Automatically. I opened my eyes and smiled.

_Yes_.

**99999999999999999999999999999999999**

By the time I found my way to Chief Swan's house, I had meandered over about four times as many miles of road as I needed to. I had realized after I'd left the school (and once I was a ways down an unfamiliar highway) that I had no idea where Bella's house was, or even what it looked like. This was going to be harder than I thought. After passing it three or four times, I noticed a house with a squad car parked out front. I was hoping Forks only had one policeman, or at least only one that drove his squad car home.

I pulled into the driveway and hopped out of Jefferson – no, Reginald – no, Theodore – I would have to come up with a name for the beloved truck eventually, and I had been working on it most of the way home. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought of anything I actually liked. I grabbed my bag and sauntered up the walk to an old once-white house that looked like it should be haunted. I paused in front of the damp little porch and frowned, looking from the house's ancient and rusted roof fixtures, to its curled and peeling shingles, to its weather-beaten walls, all the way down to the splattery brown stains running all around the bottom that seemed to be the mark of a decade's worth of rotted foliage. I was no princess: I hadn't been expecting the Ritz. But this would take some getting used to. As I walked through the front door, I hoped that the place would at least smell better than it looked. It didn't. Charlie must have been a fish guy. I was not. I hated fish; especially the smell, which permeated every inch of the kitchen. I held my breath and walked through to the living room. I looked over the back of a large plush couch and found a man sprawled across it, snoring so loudly that he drowned out the sports announcers blaring on the TV in the background. As I leaned over him and grabbed for the remote, I saw that — to my relief — the lapel on his furry-collared police jacket read "Chief Swan". His snoring seemed even louder after I put the game on mute.

Once I had trudged upstairs, it didn't take long to figure out which room was Bella's: of the three rooms on the second floor only two were bedrooms, and I was betting Chief Swan didn't have lace curtains. I flopped onto the fluffy bed in the middle of Bella's room. This must be the dream of a million Twilight fans across the world: to see Bella's room, to lie in her bed, to live her ridiculously fragile life. The Edward parts I wouldn't count, since they were overrated thus far; but beyond that, I was living the impossible fantasy of thousands of girls, any of whom I would have traded places with in an instant. But it wasn't Edward Cullen's #1 fan lying here in Bella's shoes, literally: it was me. And all I wanted was to get home. But _how_? I didn't even have any clue how I'd gotten here in the first place. I buried my face in Bella's pillow with a groan. It smelled like strawberry pudding. I sighed as I rolled over and stared out the window, basking in the pitter-patter of the raindrops against the clean glass.

Compared to the rest of the house, Bella's room felt totally out of place: tidy, cheerful, bright. I wondered if Charlie had fixed up the room once he'd found out his daughter would be coming to stay. No doubt he'd been the one who had staple-gunned a long phone line along the floor, which connected to a bulky, boxy computer. I slid over to the desk and booted it, hoping to find some clue that would help me keep up my Bella-charade. Some case files and character bios would have been nice, but I wasn't holding my breath. Fortunately, her password was auto-remembered on her computer. Unfortunately, it contained almost nothing — didn't Bella keep a diary or something? — but her inbox was already full of mail from her mother. I tried to remember how long it had been since Bella left Phoenix, without success. The emails were almost identical:

Dear Bella,

How are you darling/sweetheart/honeybun? I haven't heard from you in 2 hours/7 hours/24 hours/the last 5 seconds. Did Charlie/your father/that man install the internet connection like he was supposed to? You know if you change your mind/get lonely/feel homesick, or if Forks is too cold/rainy/uncomfortable/full of blood-sucking monsters for you, you can always call/email/write/fly home immediately.

Love/Love/Love/Love,

Mom

By the time I logged out, I was giggling quietly to myself. As far as I was concerned, Bella had hit the parental jackpot. Of course Charlie (from what I remembered of the book) was a bit clingy and under-emotional, and Bella's mother – from what I'd read – was moderately clingy and over-emotional; but if those were their main flaws, they were definitely keepers in my book. Maybe Bella had used up all her good luck on great parents, and that was why she had absolutely none left for average day-to-day luck things like not sitting next to undead lab partners who want to eat you. At any rate, Bella and her mother were obviously very close. I wondered if I would get to meet her…

Or Charlie for that matter, who I heard still snoring away downstairs. I could see right away that Charlie was going to be the biggest problem: he'd known Bella from birth, whereas I'd only known her from this morning. He would be the first one to catch on to anything out of place in Bella's usual behavior, and my usual behavior was about as 'Bella-like' as it was… well, _nothing_. I would have to pull the still-adjusting act around Charlie, at least until we got to know each other a little better. That is, if I was going to be in the book that long. I'd been acting like a permanent resident all day, but the truth was that I could have been back home at any minute. Surely if I'd been dumped into Forks out of the blue, I could be rescued just as suddenly. I could be standing in front of Bella's sink tomorrow morning, and the—

My eyes flew wide as I leapt out of bed. Why hadn't I thought of it _before_??

I bolted out the door and down the hall, skidding to a stop at the bathroom and turning both knobs on the sink as far as they would go. I wiggled first one, then the other, tested more hot, less cold, one, the other, trying to create the same cold steam from this morning. The tap ran irregularly, gurgling hopefully at random intervals as I watched it, transfixed. A minute passed, two, five.

Nothing.

The sink steadily started to fill with water, and with an inward groan I relented. Maybe the sink had to be broken, like mine? I could see how that conversation would go: _'Hey, Charlie, can we break the sink? I should really learn to fix a sink you know, because I'll be off to college soon and on my own and then I'll need to know how to fix my own sink and I can only fix one now if it's broken first, so let's break this one. …All the other girls at school are doing it.' _I bet that would go over just _swimmingly_.

"Like some stupid _sink_ is going to be some kind of mystic portal or something _anyway_," I muttered, leaning my forehead against the cool glass of the mirror with an exasperated sigh. After a few deep breaths, I stood up and nearly screamed at the girl who appeared out of nowhere in front of me. My heart raced as I took in the earthy brown hair, the heart-shaped face, the alabaster skin… I blinked, and the girl blinked back at me. It was Bella — _I_ was Bella. I glanced over her delicate nose, her stubborn chin, her long eyelashes, her frail frame… this was me? I touched Bella's face and felt her fingers on my cheek. I pursed her lips and felt the blood rushing in my own. It was real. I saw it and felt it and breathed it and watched Bella stare back at me and knew that it was no hallucination. I didn't know how, or why, but it was no dream: I had really become Bella. Well, except for one minor detail: my eyes weren't the deep chocolate brown I remembered from the book, but the same soft sea-green that had always stared back at me. I blinked and focused on the familiar irises, each yellow spec, each blue semi-circlet still in place.

I didn't realize I was crying until I saw a fat tear roll off Bella's cheek and fall into the sink. I couldn't have said why. Maybe it was the realization that I wasn't going to wake up and find out that everything had been a nightmare. Maybe it was the compounding frustration of the entire day. Maybe it was the shock of two near-death experiences. Or maybe it was the comfort that, trapped as I was in Bella's life, Bella's story, Bella's body, a little piece of me was still infused. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve – Bella's tear ducts may have been hyperactive, but I was no crybaby. I stared at myself in the mirror silently, with only the sound of the rain and Charlie's snores.

_It'll be ok_, I reasoned to the Bella reflection. _Edward will know how tasty you are now, so he won't get close anymore. You don't have to worry about school, you already know everything you're being taught. You just have to hang around and play house until whatever put you here in the first place decides to put you back._ I became more confident as the argument went along. It made sense: without the threat that Edward presented, I really only had to wait. There was no need to panic. It was just like an extended vacation in a place with great weather. An adventure.

Patience. All I needed was my wits and some patience. I retreated to Bella's bed and lay watching the rain. I was a patient person, or I _could_ be. I crawled beneath the covers and stared at the pointed ceiling.

I would have to be.

**99999999999999999999999999999999999**

**A/N: Ahhhh, kind of a boring chapter (not a stitch of dialogue!), sorry. I think it's kind of an important one though, and it took a lot of abstract thinking lol. Btw, any thoughts on the name of Bella's truck? I'm taking suggestions~**


	7. Chapter 7

**99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**

**Death to the Non-Believer**

**Chapter 7**

The new day brought with it an entirely new outlook on my situation. Now that I had resigned myself to simply waiting it out, I didn't need to stress over what to do, or whether the arm that poured my coffee was really mine or if it was Bella's, or anywhere inbetween. I took an attitude of excited nonchalance to the entire thing. It would be fun: trying to convince everyone I was someone else, getting to actually _be_ someone else (after all, wasn't that every teenage girl's dream?). If fate was going to cast me as Bella, I would embrace the role like a star actress. I was not going to lose any sleep over this.

Charlie was already gone when I woke up, thankfully putting off the moment when my Bella-act would be truly tested for a little longer.

School was much as it had been the day before. I got to attend English for the first time (hadn't dropped in until Trig the day before), and I found my seat was next to ever-pleasant Mike. English had always been one of my favorite subjects, and while Mr. Mason put bulleted symbolisms for the first chapter of Jane Eyre on the board, my mind wandered to the scene where the crazed Mrs. Rochester visits Jane's chamber in the middle of the night. I thought of Edward Cullen roaming loose somewhere in the woods of Washington and shuddered. I could relate. Government with Jefferson passed in much the same fashion – another of my favorite subjects, without surprises. I spent the period looking at the faces around me, recognizing some from the day before, trying to memorize the others. Mike intercepted Jessica and me in the cafeteria again, and I knew all of Jessica's friends who joined us but one, a lanky, oily boy with the worst skin I'd seen in years. I felt immediately sorry for him: high school was hard enough without being the gross one. His high-pitched, nasally voice didn't help either. To make things worse, he wasn't a bastard who deserved his pariahisms either, he seemed kind: he spent the entire lunch hour helping Angela with a Trig problem.

I wondered without looking at them whether the Cullens – the four that had come to school – were looking at me. I was unsurprised but still relieved when Edward Cullen was absent from biology that day. I stared at his empty chair while I tuned out the lecture. Had he gone to the ends of the Earth? Or just far enough that he couldn't smell me? How far was far enough? I'd read somewhere that sharks could smell a drop of blood from a mile away. Surely Edward was a greater hunter than a fish? He was a thinking, rational being after all. Then what must Edward be thinking of this irresistibly delicious girl who had suddenly collided with his peaceful world? No doubt he cursed my very existence, as I had cursed his the day before. I snorted under my breath. What an ironic similarity. We each wanted the other gone, and we both needed to get out of Forks. I chalked it up to my historically ghastly luck that Edward had partly succeeded and I had not.

I found a drug-style envelope full of cash in Barnaby/Norman/Truman (I needed to find a baby name book for my truck) on the passenger seat after school, which was apparently meant for food. It didn't take long driving on Forks' only main road to find Forks' only grocery store. It was almost like a farmers' market, full of old-fashioned candy jars and grain barrels and happy little old people buying canned fruit. When I got home I quickly set about peeling and chopping: I loved to cook. I had just put a lasagna into the oven when the screen door fluttered shut with a loud _ka-chack_ behind me. I spun around in my oven mitts and apron and faced Bella's father. The moment of truth had arrived.

"Hey, Bella."

"Hey… Dad." The word felt strange in my mouth. "Uh, welcome home!"

"Thanks." He hung his gun belt on a dilapidated hat-rack looking contraption by the door as I tossed my mitts onto the counter and started scrubbing a large pot. I wondered what need he could possibly have of a gun in a Podunk little town like Forks.

"What's for dinner?" he asked.

"Lasagna and garlic bread," I answered. Just saying it made my mouth water. "It won't be ready for a while yet, though." I went back to the dishes, and he hesitated a moment before continuing into the living room and flipping on the vague noises of some other sporting event.

Maybe this wouldn't be as hard as I'd thought.

When the egg timer went off an hour later, I abandoned the book I'd been reading on a chair and called Charlie into the kitchen. He lumbered in as I pulled out the dish and set it on the table.

"Smells good, Bell." It _did_.

"Thanks."

It wasn't until the middle of his second helping that Charlie started going into typical parental-investigation-mode.

"So," he spoke between bites, "how did you like school? Have you made any friends?"

"Well, I have a few classes with a girl named Jessica," I supplied. "I sit with her friends at lunch. And there's this boy, Mike, who's very friendly. Everybody seems pretty nice." _With one outstanding exception_, I thought bitterly.

"That must be Mike Newton. Nice kid – nice family. His dad owns a sporting goods store just outside of town. He makes a good living off all he backpackers who come through here." I must have missed the backpacker rush, since I seemed to only run into the same handful of people every day, no matter where I went. I should have known that Charlie would be familiar with every human being in the county back to their grandfathers. Except for maybe…

"Do you know the Cullen family?" I asked. I wondered what he _did_ know about them.

"Dr. Cullen's family? Sure. Dr. Cullen's a great man." I remembered him from the book. He was one of the members of the Cullen brood that I would have genuinely liked to meet. Charlie clearly thought highly of him.

"They… the kids are…" I stumbled for the right words, "a little different. They don't seem to fit in very well at school…"

"People in this town," he sputtered. "Dr. Cullen is a brilliant surgeon who could probably work in any hospital in the world, make ten times the salary he gets here." Which was apparently totally unsuspicious to Charlie. Who _wouldn't_ want to live in the middle of nowhere? With the backpackers! "We're lucky to have him – lucky that his wife wanted to live in a small town." Ahh. "He's an asset to the community, and all of those kids are well-behaved and polite." Mental note: apparently wanting to rip someone's throat out and eat their organs went down under 'well-behaved and polite' in Charlie's book. He was getting louder as he continued. "I had my doubts, when they first moved in, with all those adopted teenagers. I thought we might have problems with them. But they're all very mature." If only he knew. "I haven't had one speck of trouble from any of them. That's more than I can say for the children of some folks who have lived in this town for generations. And they stick together the way a family should — camping trips ever other weekend…" Second mental note: go camping with Charlie. "Just because they're newcomers, people have to talk."

It was a long speech for such a stoic man. It made me wonder what the locals were saying — probably nothing nearly as bad as the truth. I put my hand over Charlie's, which was clenched around his fork.

"They seemed nice to me," I lied soothingly. "I just noticed they kept to themselves." Especially in biology. "They're all very attractive," I added, trying to give at least one honest compliment.

"You should see the doctor," Charlie laughed, his anger dissipated. "It's a good thing he's happily married. A lot of nurses at the hospital have a hard time concentrating on their work with him around." I giggled at the prospect of Charlie standing in a waiting room, watching nurses trail the lovely doctor. It was comfortable, dinner with Charlie. I wasn't used to it — eating a meal together around a table. It was… nice.

We didn't speak for the rest of the night, but Charlie offered to clean up afterwards, which gained him even more brownie points in the Bella-has-awesome-parents book. Of course, I had pretty low standards when it came to parents. I rushed up the stairs to play busy-doing-homework (I was infamous for never doing my homework, I certainly wasn't going to do it now that I actually KNEW all the subjects being taught).

**99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**

The rest of the week passed in much the same pattern. I adjusted to the rhythm of school, and by Friday I could recognize everyone in my classes. I began to watch with increasing anxiety for the Cullens to enter the lunch room each day, anticipating the arrival of the fifth 'sibling', but he did not reappear. For all I knew, he had wised-up and dropped out of school entirely. What kind of teenager liked going to school anyway? Besides me. But as Edward's absence dragged on, I found my lunch hour spent less and less worried about him, and more focused on the La Push beach trip that Mike was planning for our lunch group the following week, and which he brought up anew each day. I had been invited, and accepted, though Bella and I shared the opinion that good beach weather was not to be found in Forks.

But no matter how absorbed I became at lunch, when I sat alone in biology each day, I became re-consumed by my own curiosty. I found myself staring at his empty chair, found my thoughts wandering over and over again to Edward Cullen. When I ran out of questions to mull over, I began inventing scenarios in my head: on Tuesday he was wrestling a bear in Oregon, Friday he was chopping wood for an elderly couple up north in exchange for a place to sleep, on Thursday he had massacred an entire town of men, women, and children in his fallen bloodlust. At the end of the day, though, he was always homesick for his family and full of hate for me. He was much like the cursed prince from Beauty and the Beast in my imaginings: standing aloof from the world that would no longer accept him; trying to prove he wasn't just the monster he saw in the mirror. Did Edward long for his humanity again, too? He certainly wasn't as lonely as the Beast; Edward had his family. …Right?

It was a romanticized plot, to be sure. Hell, it was _Disney_. For all my ponderings, I didn't delude myself: I was pretty certain that the next time I saw Edward Cullen, it would be when he ripped my throat out of my neck with his teeth. I could see it playing in my head, the black, soulless eyes locked on me…

Saturday was a welcome escape from the thought-trap of the biology classroom. Charlie, probably used to avoiding the empty house, worked most of the weekend. I busied my hands to give my over-active imagination a break, cleaning floors, scraping out cobwebs, generally waging war on the dirt and decay of the house. By Sunday it looked positively quaint, compared to the drab shambles it had been when I'd arrived. I packed a week's worth of lunches into the freezer for Charlie, and drove (which I was getting fairly good at) to the tiny Forks library. The selection was depressing, but a nice woman at the front desk recommended that I try Seattle or Olympia, which weren't too far. It was hard to believe that any kind of real civilization could exist within a hundred miles of Forks. When I got home and google mapped it, I found that I was almost right. I would have to plan a day to drive out. I google mapped all of the gas stations along the way, too, and printed it out: I didn't know what kind of gas mileage Darwin/Stanley/What-am-I-going-to-name-my-truck got, but I shuddered to even think about it.

Much to my delight, the rain continued to fall nonstop throughout the entire weekend, and greeted me Monday morning. It was hard for me to be anything but content amidst the gentle thrum of so much precipitation. I noticed it was colder than usual as I made my way from the parking lot to English, or rather I noticed that a number of my classmates had added yet another insulating layer to their many jackets. I, on the other hand, had been gradually thinning my wardrobe. It wasn't as windy in Forks as I had thought it would be, and though the temperature sat around forty degrees most of the day, it didn't drop off much before dark. Fifty was shorts weather for me. I was a California girl though and through: I wore flip-flops when it was colder than this. Unfortunately, Bella didn't seem to have a single pair, and only one pair of shorts, so I had to make due most days with jeans, a short-sleeved shirt, and a jacket for walking from my truck to class. Most of the other Forkians, bundled up like Eskimos under mittens and hats and layer after layer of snow gear, looked at me in horror as I ran hither and thither with bare arms. It made me giggle.

Mike had gotten used to my dressing habits pretty quickly, and didn't look surprised when I stripped down to a single layer next to him in English. The pop quiz didn't have any surprises on it either, though Mike's sullen face told me that he'd neglected his reading again. I clapped my hand on his shoulder, and suddenly realized how comfortable I'd become as Bella — more than I could ever have imagined.

"Cheer up, Mike. It only counts for ten points," I said reassuringly.

"Yeah, but ten and ten and ten and ten and ten add up to… well, not to an A." We chuckled as Mike opened the door in front of me. "Hey, it's snowing."

I stopped dead in my tracks.

"What did you say?"

"It's, uh, snowing?"

My eyes lit up, and I rushed past a startled Mike. Beyond him, the world was a sea of white, as if all of Forks had been dusted with powdered sugar like a giant lemon bar. I stopped in the middle of a huge open plain of white and turned in circles, taking in the glistening sight from every direction. My cheeks began to sting. I looked up and saw the sky full of swirling tufts of snow. They didn't fall straight down, as I'd imagined, but fluttered side to side, uncertain, finally making their way to the ground where they sparkled, reflecting rainbows of the mottled sunlight that made it through the clouds.

"Oh, it's…" I turned to look at Mike, still standing in the doorway. "It's just _beautiful!" _I whispered, beaming through a cloud of my own breath. "So _beautiful_…" I stretched out my hand and caught a tiny flurry on the tip of my finger. It looked like a tiny dandelion puff.

"Haven't you ever seen snow before?" asked Mike, coming up behind me.

"No," I breathed, still entranced, "never falling." The closest thing to snow I knew was brown, mushy slush frozen together in a lump. I had been to all sorts of places where it snowed, in the snowy season, but I had a knack for getting there just when the snow had ended and the freak heat waves began. It was a talent.

Mike continued to watch me, fascinated at my wonder. The wet _thwack_ of ice into the back of his head finally broke the spell.

"Nice shot, man!" I called to Eric over Mike's shoulder. His back was turned as if oblivious — walking away from us nonchalantly, but in the opposite direction of his next class.

"Hey, where's your loyalty?" called Mike with mock indignation. The snow on top of his head began to melt down around his ears, and he shivered before shaking his head out like a dog as we both laughed. Maybe he really had been a puppy in a former life. Mike turned to find Eric still in range and stooped to grab a handful of the icy ammunition as the bell rang for the next period.

"I'll see you at lunch, okay?" I said, still laughing as I took a step towards government. He waved me on with a grin as he silently hurried after Eric's retreating figure. I skipped to class, dipping my toes in the piles of fluff and tossing them up in the air in front of me, giggling and shouting in delight with each step like a five-year-old. I could feel eyes on me, and saw the few people I passed stare with worried expressions. They could stare all they wanted, I was in Forks, and it was _snowing_! I smiled at them began singing out loud to myself with total abandon, throwing my hands up in the air and snow-dancing my way through Forks.

**99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999**

**A/N: I need names for Bella's truck! Stat! Leave a comment with a name, even if you think it's stupid. I'm glad this is the last of the Edward-less chapters. It's just not the same without him. Also, the more I write Mike, the more I like him. He was kind of pathetic/annoying to me when I read Twilight. lol**


	8. Chapter 8

****

**Death to the Non-Believer**

**Chapter 8**

By the time I got to my next class I was totally out of breath and my cheeks were apple red. Everyone in the room was already talking about the snow fall — apparently the first decent one of the season — when I walked in. I spent the entire hour staring dreamily out the window in a happy stupor. It seemed everyone had the same idea as Eric and Mike, and by third period I had to hold my binder up to shield myself from the crossfire. Jessica said she thought I was hilarious, but I saw the twinkle in her eye, and had a retaliation-snowball ready with her name on it. I didn't mind the snow on me — I was already fighting the urge to throw myself headfirst into the nearest pile — but I'd be darned if I was going to get my papers wet. I did all of my writing in ink, and I didn't have to be Jack Frost to know that melted snow would not be very ink-friendly. Or maybe it was the drippy way that Mike's spiked hair had begun to wilt by lunch time that drove my aversion to the beautiful snow. He and Jessica talked animatedly back and forth about who had caught whom where and how many times and with how big a snowball. I wondered if there was some kind of system to keep track—this whole snow thing was so new.

Their chatter continued as our group moved towards the lunch line, my eyes scanning subconsciously for oncoming projectiles. It seemed one could never be too at ease next to Mike, who had made himself the school's main snow-target-

He was there. Suddenly the din of the caf faded away and I was at full attention. There, next to Alice, across from Rosalie, laughing as if he hadn't a care in the world, rosy-cheeked as if he were almost alive, sat Edward Cullen. My heart fell to my feet and bounced around in my toes. I don't know how long I stood in a horrified daze before the tugging on my sleeve brought me back to the lunchroom.

"Hello? _Bella_?" whined Jessica impatiently. "What do you want?"

I looked up at her, then Mike, both holding their trays and staring at me, and then looked down at the steaming trays of chicken wings and mashed potatoes. Suddenly nothing looked appetizing.

"What's with Bella?" Mike asked. I was starting to space out. Again.

"Nothing," I lied, as my eyes began to focus again. "I'll just get a soda today." I quickly grabbed a diet coke and headed for our usual table. Jessica and Mike, who had paused in their initial confusion, hurried to catch up to me as I made a bee line to the nearest empty table amidst the throng of students.

"Aren't you hungry?" Jessica asked, falling skippingly into stride behind me.

"Actually, I feel a little sick," I replied, still bobbing and weaving expertly through the human traffic. My stomach did another flip-flop as I slid hurriedly into my chair with a scrape.

He was back.

He wasn't supposed to be back. I clutched my Coke as I sipped at it to hide my shaking hands. I knew he returned in the book, but I'd thought… I looked up at their table. I thought I'd given him a chance to escape.

I thought he'd take it.

I watched their little group laughing and chatting happily like characters in a Normal Rockwell postcard. It didn't look like a show. I knew better. I was sure that even as he revealed that dazzling smile Edward was scanning the thoughts of every person within five feet of Bella – of me – straining to gauge my reaction. But as I looked closer, I noticed that some of that vigor was genuine. Edward's eyes had returned to their normal clear amber – a far cry from the soulless black I had last seen. His cheeks had color, too, and the dark circles under his eyes had faded.

My fear was immediately tempered as my curiosity took over. This was a conundrum. How could Edward Cullen have rosy cheeks? My apple cheeks were the result of blood gathering in my face. Did the Cullens even technically _have_ blood? I had thought their shining paleness was caused by their lack of blood. I continued to stare as I racked my brain for anything in the book that would have explained it, but the text was becoming fuzzy in my head. Why would he-

"Bella, what are you staring at?" Jessica interrupted my train of thought, and for a moment I looked down. I knew what would happen next. Jessica followed my line of site to the infamous corner table.

"Edward Cullen is staring at you," she continued. I knew he would be. Jessica had unintentionally summoned his gaze by uttering my name. He must have been burning to know what Bella was thinking. Or maybe just to know what she tasted like. But then again-

"He doesn't look… angry, does he?" I asked, still staring into my soda.

"No," she scrunched up her nose incredulously. "Should he be?"

To that, I didn't have an answer. I tried to remember the Edward from the book. Surely he hated Bella, the girl who confounded his powers, who endangered his quiet life, who posed a risk to his family and his own sanity. Surely he would despise the one girl who had come so close to turning him back into the monster he so desperately fought within himself. A girl who represented his greatest challenge.

But he had come back. From wrestling bears, or playing woodsman, or whatever he had done the past week, despite the danger he had come back.

So he was someone who faced his fears. I'd give him that. But was he magnanimous, too?

I unfurrowed my brow and looked up to meet his gaze with my own now calm one and looked into his eyes. They were curious, like mine. I searched his face, scanning for a hint of that anger, that bloodlust, but found none. He had re-conquered the predator – for now at least. I felt the last of my fear melt away.

"I don't think he likes me" I whispered, knowing he would hear, though his face gave away nothing. The words tasted sad on my lips. Now that I wasn't terrified, I could pity the large burden that Bella's – my – existence posed to the Cullen family.

"The Cullens don't like _anybody,_" Jessica spat bitterly. I turned to look at her to see if the vitriol in her voice matched her face, but she maintained her mask of sweetness. "Well, they don't notice anybody enough to like them." She looked back toward the corner table.

"But he's still staring at you." Jessica was too easy to read.

"Stop looking at him," I said. There was no point in her longing for or fuming over something that would never be. And, having read the script of her fate, I knew that Edward Cullen at least would never be in the cards for her. But Mike-

"Hey, Jessica-" as if he'd read my mind, Mike leaned over and began to describe his plans for a 'battle of the blizzard' to be held after school (unfortunately his plans would be in vain, as I could already hear the familiar pitter patter of rain on the roof), leaving me to my thoughts. I didn't look at Edward Cullen again during lunch, though my mind was full of him.

The bell rang, and I spared a glance back at the seat next to him. Alice didn't seem concerned – and it was Alice who would know to be worried. She had a cautionary hand placed on Jasper's leg, as she had all through the past week (I vaguely remembered a newly weaned Jasper being a chief source of worry for the early-chapter Cullens), but she took no such precaution with Edward.

He was staring at me again, no doubt putting all his concentration into listening for Bella's thoughts. Was it terrifying? Frustrating? To Edward the ability to hear others was just another one of his senses, like sight or touch must be for a human. How would I react, I wondered, if suddenly I encountered someone I couldn't see or feel? It would be maddening.

I steeled myself. If he could face his fears, so would I. I smiled at him, and his brow furrowed ever so slightly. _See you in Biology._

**A/N: Wow, I realized I had this saved on my desktop for like… a year. Along with a good chunk of the next few chapters. I miss writing, so expect at least a few more chapters in the next weeks. **


End file.
